


Five By Three

by omphale23



Series: Personal Pineapples [7]
Category: Band of Brothers, Defying Gravity (TV), Life, Standoff, The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Multi, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three sets of five things in the Big Damn Crossover AU. Matt, Charlie, Dani, Wendy, Maddux, Miles, and guest appearances by Dick and Lew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five By Three

_Four Times Charlie Wanted To, But Didn't. And One He Did._

1\. The night that Matt got back, after he'd been to the hospital and been checked out and cleared, Charlie followed him home. They'd driven so far, with Matt following behind him. Charlie didn't want to let Matt out of his sight now that they were talking again.

He sat in his car, out in Matt's driveway, for almost an hour. Charlie wasn't sure what came next, he didn't know whether he was supposed to knock on the door or just walk in. But he knew that he wanted more, wanted something from Matt that he couldn't ask, and so he curled up in the back seat, waiting.

2\. They went to a barbecue at Bobby's, a few weeks after Matt first kissed him. Charlie stood on the porch under the awning, sipping his beer and watching Matt across the yard. He was laughing at something Bobby had said, and looking seriously at the burgers as if they required thought, expressions sliding over his face like water. Charlie was considering grabbing another beer and wandering over, but just then Matt looked up at him and smiled, and Charlie thought to himself, _oh_.

3\. Reese sometimes glared at him when he started talking about Matt, and knowing that she was thinking—_that_—made Charlie think of it. It was unfortunate that thinking never meant that he could call out and go find Matt to make him think of it, too.

4\. When Matt woke up from a nightmare, Charlie tried to be there with a glass of water and a sleeping pill. He didn't really think the pills were a good idea, but the first time he suggested a blowjob to relax Matt instead, it was like the record skipped. Charlie didn't know why it wouldn't work, just that Matt didn't mention it after and he didn't stop asking for the pills, either.

5\. The morning that Ted got married, Charlie woke up early and found a note on the pillow. Matt was out on the balcony, wearing boxers and a pair of flip flops, and Charlie stood in the doorway and watched him eat a peach. It was messy and sticky and afterward, when Charlie was licking his way up Matt's chest and tasting juice and salt and sunlight, he couldn't remember why he'd come outside in the first place.

***

_Five times Maddux saw something that made him think he was going crazy..._

1\. When he was ten or eleven, he was visiting his uncles in LA and came in from the pool to find Charlie sitting at the table and talking to himself. Maddux didn't say anything. He snuck upstairs instead, and spent the afternoon in his room listening to old punk albums and drawing schematics for lunar landers.

Matt got home that night and Charlie was still in the kitchen, staring out the window and answering questions nobody had asked. Matt leaned in, kissed Charlie on the forehead, and they all sat down to dinner as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had.

2\. He fell out of the oak tree behind the house, trying to sneak in after curfew. Maddux felt something crack as he hit the grass—it turned out to be his collarbone—and when he opened his eyes, there were two guys standing over him.

He would have thought it was just Matt and Charlie—strange enough, since they were on vacation in Bali that month—but the guys were way too young and, when Maddux took a second to think, wearing uniforms that he was pretty sure were older than anybody he knew.

He closed his eyes again, listening to the sound of an argument that had been going on for a while. The point of it seemed to be that Maddux took after Lew's side of the family, because he never thought about what would happen if things went wrong. He didn't hear the rest, or ever see the guys again. Probably.

3\. Maddux didn't get on a plane to follow Miles when he quit the program. He stuck it out, ended up on the Mars mission, and only occasionally thought he caught a flash of red hair at the back of a room or across the street.

4\. At his grandfather's funeral, Maddux sat with his parents at the front of the church and wondered whether anyone else had noticed that one of the floral arrangements was made entirely of pineapples and oranges.

5\. Matt and Charlie spent a lot of time in Charlie's closet. Maddux didn't think anything of it as a kid, but years later, when he got curious and started to do some research on his family history, he decided that he'd imagined all those glimpses of photographs and butcher paper. It was easier to think that than put together a picture of what had actually happened.

***

_Five Times Wendy Watson made Dani Reese smile in public._

1\. It's a little-known fact—actually, a completely unknown fact—that Dani Reese is ticklish. Or at least, it was completely unknown until she met Wendy Watson.

2\. Twelve ginger cupcakes with green tea icing, boxed and ribboned and left on Reese's desk the day after they met. There wasn't a card, but Reese didn't need one.

Charlie spent the next week puzzled and worried and half-convinced that he was going to have to kill someone he'd never even met. He was more than a little relieved to finally meet Wendy in person.

3\. She replaced Crews' pineapple smoothie with an avocado-chili-and-peanut-butter milkshake. Matt called and bitched for an hour about Charlie's sudden enthusiasm for weird food combinations.

Wendy didn't mind, because Reese was still smirking two days later at the look on Charlie's face when he took that first sip.

4\. Reese would never, ever admit it, but the year that Wendy bought them both an entire day's worth of carousel tickets and enough funnel cake to bury a house? That was her favorite birthday.

5\. When Matt and Charlie finally got married, Wendy leaned over and whispered in Dani's ear, _you think they'll stand up for us, or should we just elope and save ourselves the inevitable natural disaster_?

They both missed the speeches and cake, but nobody except Charlie noticed. All he did was ask the kitchen to save them a plate and grin like an idiot when they finally arrived.

The three of them watched Matt dance with Cheryl and took bets on which of them was really leading. It was fun, until Matt noticed Charlie standing against the wall. He danced Cheryl over to Frank and pushed the two of them together, and then stalked over to drag Charlie out of the room by his carefully-knotted tie.

Wendy and Dani took that as their cue to sneak out.


End file.
